Five by five.

Things have slowed down over here, which I am grateful for. I no longer feel this ginormous weight of ‘here I am’ on my head. This is a nice change, though I know it won’t be this way forever. I haven’t figured out why it’s gone away, but I suspect it’s because the message has been delivered and now it’s up to me to do something about it. What else is new, really?

I’ve been thinking a lot about signal clarity and have tried four separate times to sit down and write about it, but it’s not coming out the way I want it to. In fact, I wrote three pages that conflated signal clarity with hearing the Gods. Oops. It was on the fourth try that I finally figured out what I was really trying to write.

There’s been a slow shifting going on and I hadn’t noticed it until I really started paying attention. That’s me, though; I miss the damn point until it’s pressing into my forehead.

In short, my ability to hear is creeping back and my ability to discern is sharpening.

I’ve written before about my God-radio being broken on purpose and how angry that has made me. I’m slow to let go of anger, but writing it all out and having a no-holds-barred conversation with Mr. Mister helped. It was mostly me talking quite loudly at His altar, but it was the first time I’d actually felt Him trying to talk back. It was an intense pressure in my head that I couldn’t shake and there was lots of frustration on both sides that I could not hear, but that’s what you get with a broken radio.

I don’t think it’s in fragments and dust, though, and I think that’s very important right now because it seems to be sputtering and coughing to life right now. My best metaphor for what’s going on is that I am building new pathways around the damage. That’s not to say that it shouldn’t get fixed—it totally should, when the time is right—but that I am no longer consistently in the dark or dependent upon others for my information.

Part of the God-radio problem is my fault. I painted myself into a corner for awhile by becoming dependent on divination and other people. Instead of trying to work with what I had, I became complacent and convinced myself that, since things weren’t working, it wasn’t worth it to try which could not have been farther from the truth.

That’s also not like me. If anything, I am stubborn as hell and I don’t generally give up easily. I don’t really know what was different about this, except that I think I expected to be able to hear; in short, I took my abilities for granted when they were working and, for Mr. Mister, that just would not do in the least. He’s very much about being aware of what you have/your privilege and having the appropriate attitude about it. My attitude was anything but appropriate.

As with everything with Mr. Mister, there is a lesson involved. I’m pretty sure I don’t yet see the whole lesson-picture, but I think I’m getting there. Thus far, I have learned:

Hearing the Gods is a privilege, not a right. I am not entitled to hear Them or entitled to any communication from Them despite any inborn gift I may or may not have [we could argue inborn gift versus learned skill all day]. Just because I have a relationship with Mr. Mister and possibly Others does not mean that I get anything special in the way of communication. I cannot make demands around communication, such as believing that Mr. Mister is bound by our relationship to fix my head. He doesn’t owe me anything. In fact, I owe Him a great deal. With that in mind..

I have to do the work, period. Hearing and discernment are not easy things to learn and it has taken me six years to get to where I am now, as broken and pothole-filled as it may currently be, and I am nowhere near finished or even, in some ways, begun. Almost every spirit-worker I know has spent years refining their discernment skills. I can’t expect Mr. Mister to do any of that for me because what would be the point? I know for me that..

I only value things I have worked for. It’s kind of a nasty truth about me, but I am much more likely to disregard a gift than I am something I have put some sweat equity into, either mental or physical. That’s been something hard to learn, but it’s become a real cornerstone of my relationship with Mr. Mister. He has no interest in delivering me things on a silver platter. That’s just not our relationship. He [and I] and very much into me earning the things I get from Him. There’s something about that pushes the right buttons with me about that. It doesn’t mean He doesn’t care and, in fact, I believe it means He cares a great deal for me. It would be easy to just give me what I need/want but it takes a great deal of investment to oversee the process of learning/earning. If He didn’t care, He wouldn’t bother.

I’ve also had to check my assumptions at the door. Since I once heard quite clearly, I assumed I would always hear quite clearly and, as I said above, I didn’t value it because I had to put no work in to get it. I can’t assume that my signal clarity will ever be any better than it already is, or that it will get any easier to hear him. Assumptions lead to disappointment and disappointment masks learning opportunities—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed the point because I’ve been too busy being disappointed about something or other. Assumptions will lead me away from the path Mr. Mister has set before me and are an excellent way to waste some time and some effort that could be better spent doing something else, like actually working.

I’ve learned how to have faith in myself. It’s one thing to have faith in a God, but that faith can’t exist if I don’t have faith in me that I am hearing what I think I am hearing. That’s not to say that I blindly believe everything that I hear or think I hear. I think it’s good to have a healthy amount of doubt—after all, I am human and I will make mistakes or make associations that just aren’t there. If I can’t believe that what I am hearing is real, it makes everything else a moot point.

Through NOT hearing and NOT being able to discern, I’ve gained greater faith in Mr. Mister. It’s one thing to believe in something you hear all the time, but another entirely to believe in something that you CAN’T hear and that doesn’t automatically answer back to you. I’m not saying that’s how it should or does work for everyone, but it’s created an opportunity to deepen my faith, which can be shaky at best. Tied into that is that He has made my faith a requirement to hear better and has made it clear that my radio will not be fixed until such a time as my faith is unshakable. That isn’t easy, but given everything else, it’s right. Of course, my biggest fear is that I will never have the faith required but that drives me to face what holds me back—the fear that everything I experience is real, the fear that I am not in control, the fear that I will be changed beyond what I can imagine, and the fear that my life now means something and that I can fuck it up—and do as best as I can.

I’ve had the chance to learn and experience gratitude, too. It’s easy to take something for granted when it’s always there, but it’s a real test to be able to be grateful for that same thing when it’s NOT there. I am not perfect in my gratitude—far from it—but I am grateful[!] to know what it is to feel gratitude in my heart. I can’t explain what it is, as I think you need to experience it to know.

I’ve learned that internal validation is more important than external. I have to be okay with how I hear and what I hear and it doesn’t matter what anybody else says. Sure, I get help from the outside, but I have to not depend on that and I think I am finally in a place where, when I hear things about/from Mr. Mister from people like Boyfriend, it’s really nice and really welcome but it does not make or break my world, nor would my world end if I never heard that way again. I

What does hearing look like now? Del [also known as Boyfriend, full disclosure] wrote a great entry about hearing the Gods over at Sex, Gods, and Rock Stars and it speaks to my experiences of how I hear now. I talk out loud a lot. I have thoughts and visions and words that don’t feel like mine. I find myself saying things that I have no recollection of thinking, or never knew before they tumbled out of my mouth. Some days are better than others and I know, for me, things like hormones and stress get in the way, or when my mental health isn’t quite where it should be.

Would I like to hear more clearly? Absolutely. Would I like to hear Him say the things that He’s said to other people? More than anything. I’m content, though, with this relatively new development. I think I’m kind of at a plateau where I don’t think my signal clarity or abilities are going to jet forward that much more until the radio is fixed but who knows. I’ve been wrong before. It’s a terribly interesting journey to sit back and watch, but why would I just want to watch when I can be an active participant? I’ve got a great Partner to work with and, if He feels halfway to what I feel for Him, it only reinforces that I am the luckiest boy in the world.